Atsushi Fukui

Microsoft Azure

Japan

Community activities by "Mr. Atsushi Fukui" (MVP for Microsoft Azure) began in the latter half of the 1990's with a community in Japan named "NT Committee 2." In 1990, Mr. Fukui was transferred to Tokyo on business, and made a fateful encounter with Mr. Koido of OSK Co., Ltd. Later on, Mr. Fukui has come to assist the activities of XPJUG (eXtreme Programming Japan User Group) through introduction by Mr. Koido which was the beginning of his full-fledged community activities. Mr. Fukui talks about that period like this: "It was the earliest days of agile development in Japan and I remember that I organized study sessions about pair programming with Mr. Koido. I supported events in Japan that were participated by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler. I also planned and organized events as a staff of "XP Matsuri", which continues to be held until now. I often participated in events organized by other communities such as "Oburabu" organized by ObjectClub.

In addition, as one of the founders of the "Visual Studio User Group", Mr. Fukui keeps on participating in its activities since its start-up in 2005 and still continues activities as a member of its steering committee. He was active for a long time as a member of the contents committee of "Developers Summit", a leading event for developers in Japan. Currently, focusing on the activities of the Visual Studio User Group, he has energetically been developing session activities at Hokuriku.Net study sessions, Hero Island study sessions, .NET Labo seminars and Wan Kuma study sessions including his regular participation in XP Matsuri which has been annually organized.

He worked as a support/field SE at a PC manufacturer, a developer at a software house and an SE at a major SI vendor. After that, he worked as an architect at a foreign-affiliated SI. Currently, he has been conducting a consultation service focusing on architecture standardization, mainly targeted to the developers at the system developing companies. His work experience in the IT industry is 25 years or more in total.

9 years have already passed since he was awarded as an MVP. Mr. Fukui told us about MVP like this:

"I think my being awarded as an MVP had a significant impact on my community activities. My status as an MVP works very well for me to lead communities and also to ask other MVPs to lead communities. When I introduce myself to new participants of communities, my MVP status has a great meaning."

Mr. Fukui says that he currently focuses on offline activities the most among community activities.

He has been organizing sessions about the latest technologies twice a year for the Visual Studio User Group during VSUG Day. He says that sessions are also important as valuable occasions to communicate with participants of the community. He says conversations at the gathering after the event are always inspiring as well as the superb quality of contents of sessions during XP Matsuri. All of these experiences must be the reasons why he continues community activities.

When we asked what his favorable moment as an MVP, he answered it is MVP Global Summit. For him, MVP Global Summit is a very marvelous and valuable opportunity to have a direct conversation with MVPs from all over the world. He also mentioned that every year, he has new encounters and reunions with good old friends which are always inspiring experiences.

Lastly, Mr. Fukui gave us a precious message about the existence of MVP.

"By participating in Global MVP Summit, we can recognize how much respect is given to MVPs by employees of Microsoft. They are always serious about listening to opinions from us who are influencers for Microsoft's technologies, business partners having an authentic voice from end users and also as engineers on the same stage. MVPs from other countries express their frank opinions as an engineer. I can see that they are working with pride as an MVP every day. As long as Microsoft cares and respects MVPs, I am sure that they continue to be Microsoft's strong partners. I really would like MVPs and engineers who aim to be an MVP in Japan to communicate with Microsoft with professionalism."